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Alice at Columbia
N May 2, 1932, Mrs. Reginald Pleasance Hargreaves
was granted the degree of Doctor of Letters by Co¬
lumbia University. President Nicholas Murray Butler,
in presenting the degree, made the following citation:
"Descendant of John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster;
daughter of that distinguished Oxford scholar whose fame will
last until English-speaking men cease to study the Greek language
and its immortal literature; awakening with her girlhood's charm
the ingenious fancy of a mathematician familiar with imaginary
quantities, stirring him to reveal his complete understanding of
the lieart of a child as w ell as of the mind of a man; to create
imaginary figures and happenings in a language all his own, mak¬
ing odd phrases and facts to live on pages which will adorn the
literature of the English tongue, time without end, and which
are as charming as quizzical, and as amusing as fascinating; thereby
building a lasting bridge from the childhood of yesterday to the
children of countless tomorrows—the mo\'ing cause, Aristotle's
TO o5 EVEKa of this truly noteworthy contribution to English
literature."
Mrs. Hargreaves (the former AUce Liddell, who as a girl of ten
had inspired Lewis Carroll to compo.se Alice in Wonderland)
was given the degree at one of the culminating events of the cen¬
tenary celebration of Carroll's birth. The central theme of the
celebration was a definitive exhibirion of the published works of
the author-mathematician-cleric, which made history by bring¬
ing together for simultaneous display nine of the fifteen copies of
the 1865 edition of Alice then known to exist, as well as the
original manuscript which Dr. Evans discusses in this issue of
the Columns.
Today, after some thirty-three years, the number of known
copies of the 1865 Alice has been somewhat increased, but it is
altogether unhkely that the Columbia exhibit could be duplicated.
36